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Facebook: India asked for data of 4,144 users in last 6 months

Javed Anwer

In a report that highlights how aggressively our government is keeping
an eye on social media users, Facebook on Tuesday noted that India was
second on the list of countries that actively sought information on
Facebook users during January-June 2013.

| TNN | Updated: Aug 28, 2013, 06.44PM IST

The Indian government authorities made 3,245 requests for information on 4,144 Facebook users in the first six months of 2013.

NEW DELHI: In a report that highlights how aggressively our government is keeping an eye on social media users, Facebook on Tuesday noted that India was second on the list of countries that actively sought information on Facebook users during Jan-June 2013.

Indian government authorities made 3245 requests for information on 4,144 Facebook users in the first six months of 2013. According to the report, published by Facebook as part of its push for greater transparency in government surveillance, 74 countries requested information on over 37,954 users between January 2013 and June 2013. The US topped the list with over 11,000 requests for user data while the UK was third with 1,975 requests.

Facebook, which has become incredibly popular in India, has over 82 million active users in India. This makes India's second biggest country after the US and Canada (which are counted as single region by Facebook) in terms of number of Facebook users. The social media site not only hosts private pages and group pages maintained by companies but also pages through which political parties and activists broadcast messages and information.

"We hope this report will be useful to our users in the ongoing debate about the proper standards for government requests for user information in official investigations. And while we view this compilation as an important first report - it will not be our last," Colin Stretch, Facebook's general counsel, said in a blog post.

Facebook, along with other technology giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple, have found themselves in the middle of scandal over secret surveillance by National Security Agency (NSA) of the US. Edward Snowden, a contractor for NSA, has alleged that these companies have secretly collaborated with the NSA to spy on their users.

In the wake of the scandal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with Google CEO Larry page, said that governments should allow greater transparency into how they cultivate information on web users.

"We strongly encourage all governments to provide greater transparency about their efforts aimed at keeping the public safe, and we will continue to be aggressive advocates for greater disclosure," Stretch wrote on Tuesday.

Facebook said that it complies with government requests only after following a due process and only if it feels the request is genuine. According to the transparency report, the website only complied with 50% of total requests that Indian government made. "We routinely push back if we feel the requests are not consistent with local laws and international standards," A Facebook official told TOI.

With the role of internet growing in India society and as more and more people connect to the web through their phones, the number of requests that Indian government makes for user data from technology companies is also growing.

According to a transparency report by Google, Indian government made 2,341 requests for data on 4,106 accounts in the last six months of 2012. In comparison the figures were 2,319 and 3,467, respectively, in the first six months of the same year.

Twitter recently revealed that Indian government sought information on "less than 10 accounts" in the first half of 2013. The micro-blogging website did not comply with even a single request. But it withheld three tweets from Indian users, probably at the directions of the Indian officials.

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